


In the Air

by tempus_teapot (dreadnot)



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, PWP, dubcon, kmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-14
Updated: 2011-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:17:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadnot/pseuds/tempus_teapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kmeme prompt: sex pollen affects mages. Clearly an excuse for PWP.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opening

Nothing said Spring, Solivitus found, like a shipment of new botanical specimens. He shifted from foot to foot watching the harbormaster’s man, Aden, prying the lid off the crate with a crowbar. He pushed Aden aside as soon as the last nail was levered out of the wood and lifted the lid off himself.

He lifted the first potted plant almost reverently from the crate. “Oh yes,” he breathed. “This is perfect. _Perfect.”_

The plants had survived their long trip from the jungles of the Donarks intact and alive thanks to the preservation spells Sol had paid dearly for. He held in his hands the first specimen of _veneficus votum_ to ever successfully make the long trip south. The plant spread its dark, waxy leaves out over the edges of the pot, but the true treasure was the single flower that rose from its center on a thick stalk. The flower was the size of Sol’s hand, its petals thick and fleshy like those of a magnolia, but painted in shades of pink at their edges that darkened down to the deepest red its center. Even the pollen that clung to its glistening carpel was a vivid shade of scarlet.

“Oh, that’s beautiful.”

Sol turned to see Bethany Hawke approaching with First Enchanter Orsino. A promising mage, he heard through the grapevine. Some said the First Enchanter was cultivating her as his eventual replacement, but Sol thought she was far too young and that Orsino just liked being around a woman who wore a bit less steel than the Knight-Commander.

“May I see it?” she asked, coming closer with Orsino trailing behind looking patiently amused with her excitement.

“Yes, of course. I still need to unpack the others and—” He trailed off before frowning at Aden. “Where is the other crate? There should be two crates of these plants.”

Aden dug the shipping manifest out of his pocket and blanched. “I don’t know,” he stammered. “The harbormaster only gave me the one crate to deliver.”

Sol thrust the pot into Bethany’s hand and turned away to interrogate Aden about his missing crate.

Bethany held the pot almost reverently before raising it to smell the flower, her nose wrinkling up as though she couldn’t decide whether she liked the scent or not.

“What does this smell like to you?” she asked, holding it out to Orsino. “I almost like it, but I’m not sure.”

He chuckled at the bit of red pollen clinging to the tip of her nose and brushed it away for her. “Herbalism was never my specialty,” he demurred, but bent to sniff the flower.

One eyebrow shot up and he regarded the plant speculatively before holding out his hands for Bethany to pass the pot to him.

“Well?” she asked.

“I… couldn’t say,” he replied while he smoothed one of the flower petals between his forefinger and thumb.

“Solivitus.” Orsino tried to get the herbalist’s attention, but he barely looked away from his wrangling with Aden. “I wish to take one of your plants. If you need it, it will be in my office.”

Sol distractedly waved a hand at Orsino, which seemed to be permission enough for the First Enchanter. “If you will excuse me,” he said to Bethany. “Bureaucracy waits for no man.”

She leaned in for a last sniff of the flower before smiling up at the First Enchanter. “Better you than me.”

Her smile brightened as she looked past Orsino to one of the templars standing in the courtyard, a fact that the elf did not miss.

“Why don’t you go speak with Knight-Captain Cullen,” he suggested. “Don’t you need a templar to oversee your elemental practices? Perhaps he could think of someone,” he gave the barest of pauses, “compatible.”

“You know,” she said slowly, her face flushing pink, “I think I will.”

  
♥   


Varric had his boots up on his favorite table at the Hanged Man sharing a late lunch with Garrett, Isabela, Fenris, and Merrill.

“I don’t know whether to be grateful or worried,” Garrett was saying, looking up to wave to Anders when the mage threaded his way through the afternoon patrons.

Anders slid into an empty seat, setting a potted plant with a single flower in the center of the table. “Worried?” he asked, while Isabela rose out of her chair enough to examine the flower, falling back to snicker and lean over to whisper something in to Fenris’ ear that provoked a low chuckle from the elf.

“I was just saying to our friends that things had been quiet for so long I didn’t know whether to be grateful or worried,” Garrett said.

“And I was just about to tell Hawke that saying things like that always meant trouble,” Varric interrupted, with a mock glower at his friend.

“What did you bring for us?” Isabela asked, still chortling. She reached out to finger the flower suggestively, breaking out in peals of laughter when Fenris pulled her back again to murmur something in her ear. “Is this a new friend of yours?”

“No,” Anders huffed. “I took it as payment from a dock worker who claimed a close encounter with a pirate.”

He gave Isabela a pointed stare, but she waved it away. “Don’t look at me. You haven’t had to treat me for anything but battle wounds in ages.”

“Months,” Anders muttered, turning it into a cough when Fenris glared at him.

Merrill pulled the plant closer to her side of the table to examine it and made a noise of wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Isabela threw her head back and guffawed.

“What?” Merrill tilted her head up at Isabela. “Did I say something funny?”

“Oh, Kitten,” Isabela shook her head, her whole body shaking with her laughter. “You need a mirror that actually works in your house. I’ll give you a hand mirror at Solstice. If you’re good, I’ll even demonstrate.”

“I know how to look in a mirror,” Merrill said, looking confused. She leaned in to smell the flower and wrinkled her nose. “It’s not really sweet-smelling. What do you think?” She pushed the flower toward Isabela, who, when she took a whiff, collapsed back in her seat clutching her ribs.

“Fenris, Fenris! Smell it!”

Fenris cautiously pulled the flower to his side of the table and leaned in to take a sniff. He looked to be trying to keep his expression under control when he sat up again, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching up in what might almost be a smile.

“Hawke, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Varric asked. “I think Broody’s smiling.”

“He’s definitely smiling,” Garrett agreed, snagging the flower and pulling it over to his side of the table. “I’ve seen him do it before. Take my word for it, that’s a smile.”

When Garrett took a whiff of the flower, his eyebrows rose toward his hairline and he shot Anders a disbelieving look. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Anders just spread his hands helplessly. “I didn’t make it like that, but I kind of like it.”

Isabela burst into laughter again at that.

“Okay, let me in on the joke,” Varric said, holding out his hand and wiggling his fingers in a _gimme_ gesture. Garrett pushed the pot across the table and watched the dwarf smell the flower.

“Maker,” Varric said, staring at the plant suspiciously. “I can’t decide if that’s just wrong or so very right.”

“I can’t keep it,” Anders said. “It will just die down in Darktown. Do one of you want it?”

“Me!” Merrill said instantly. “I could use some color in my house.”


	2. Opening

Bethany thought that it was downright unfair that any templar should be as handsome as Knight-Captain Cullen. She also thought that blasted vow of chastity was why so many of them were so grumpy all the time.

Cullen, however, was never grumpy with her, and she always enjoyed taking a few minutes out of her day to talk to him. She was willing to admit to herself that she had a bit of a crush, although she would deny it to her dying day to anyone else.

So that had to explain why her heart was already aflutter, her palms sweaty, and her face hot when she followed Orsino’s suggestion to have a bit of a chat with the handsome Knight-Captain.

She was certain that Cullen was watching her approach, and for some reason, that made her put just a little extra sway in her step. “Good afternoon, Ser Cullen.”

“Bethany,” Cullen said. “How are you today?”

“I’m well.” _And bloody tired of small talk._ “Orsino said you might be able to help me.” _Help strip me to my smalls and pick me up in those big, strong templar hands and…_

Bethany’s felt a blush start in her chest and creep up toward her face. This was not like her.

Cullen didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. “If it’s within my power, I’ll do what I can.”

 _I’m quite sure it’s within your power to make me scream your name, riding you like…_

The blush hit her face like a slap.

“Bethany?”

She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath, trying to regain some equilibrium. “I… I think I might have had too much sun. I’m feeling… a bit strange.” _But your tongue between my legs would make everything all better._

Her knees grew so weak with the strength of that thought and accompanying mental image that she had to put out a hand to brace herself on Cullen’s chestplate to keep from falling.

“Bethany!” Cullen caught her with an arm around her waist.

 _That’s my name. Remember it, because I’ll make you scream it._

“Oh, Maker.” His touch sent a flare of lust through her so sharp and strong that she was certain her smalls had just gotten far too small and quite wet. “I need to go to my room.”

“I think you should see a healer,” Cullen said, his face tight with concern.

“No!” She shook her head and licked her lips, having to push against his chestplate to push back before she jumped on him and rode him to the ground right there. _I’d get that armor off in record time and have you hard and in me, fucking me, shoving yourself so hard and so deep that the walls around us would shake._

She took a wobbly step back, pulling out of his touch. “It’s the sun. I’ll drink some water and have a lie down.”

But that lustful imp living in her head made her add, “Would you walk with me? In case it gets worse. Then you can sweep me off to the healer before I can protest.”

Cullen looked around for some reason to say no, but all was calm other than Solivitus haranguing the harbormaster’s assistant, and Thrask had already gone to oversee the altercation.

“Of course,” he finally said. “I’ll make sure you have a pitcher of water when we get there.”

The walk up to her converted cell was one of the longest of Bethany’s life. Her head swam with images of Cullen, naked, pinning her to the floor, writhing under her while she rode him, his cock between her lips, sliding between her breasts, taking her every way she could imagine, even stranger ones where she rode him with a strap-on phallus until he begged her for mercy and more in the same breath.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t get you to the healer?” Cullen asked when they reached her room. She was flushed pink from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, her body covered in a light sheen of sweat, her breathing coming in pants, but she just shook her head.

“My water pitcher is over there,” she told him and waited until he entered the room before she pushed the door closed with a slam and tore at her robes.

“What are you doing?” He tried to look away, but she saw him dart a look when she dropped the robe to the floor, leaving her wearing only her smalls. “Bethany, no.”

“Bethany, yes,” she purred, pushing the cloth off her hips and stepping out of it before wriggling out of her bra. “It’s the only thing to cure what ails me.”

Cullen licked his lips, trying not to see the way her breasts swayed when she stalked toward him, the swell of her hips, the dark patch of hair that concealed secrets he had tried never to wonder after.

Amell women were going to be the death of him.

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Yes you do,” she said, taking his hand and lifting it to her breast, and Maker help them both, his hand closed over it.

Magic thrilled along her skin, reacting to his touch in a way it had never reacted to another man. For some reason, for a moment she saw Solivitus’ flower in her mind’s eye and smelled its dark, musky scent. Her magic felt like that smell, and templar or not, Cullen responded to it.

He groaned and squeezed where she had put his hand to her breast, his other arm snaking around her waist to pull him against him, or at least against his armor, drawing a gasp from her for reasons ranging from triumph, to dizzying lust, to pleasure at his touch on her breast, to discomfort at having her unprotected skin crushed against steel.

He growled in frustration. “Bed. Now.”

She let him release her and threw herself to the bed, watching as he stripped out of his armor almost as quickly as she had managed to drop the robe. He tossed the heavy armor aside with a clatter, dropping the skirts, underpadding, and finally his boots and smalls with a rush punctuated by grunts of frustration and need before he fell on her with a cry of relief that quickly turned to other sounds.

His mouth was hot, closing on her nipples, suckling at the hollow of her navel, closing over her clitoris with a scrape of teeth that made her entire body arch off the bed, a wail caught between her clenched teeth.

It was all a rush of hands, mouths, a fleeting memory later of him leaning against the wall while she knelt in front of him, fingers digging into the muscles of his ass while he thrust into her mouth.

Another memory, later taken out and examined as a curiosity of herself on all fours on the bed, wet with her own juices, semen from the many times they had already tried to sate the burning desire between them, and his saliva as he took her ass. Her fingers alternately circling her clit and dipping into her empty sex to feel him moving just on the other side of the thin wall inside her.

So many memories made in that long afternoon. She rode him, setting the pace harder and faster than he could take. The power of seeing him jerking and begging that it was too fast, too soon, he was going to, going to— and then he was lost in the moment and she watched, feeling his body jerk under her, but not feeling his release until it was coating his cock, making riding him that much hotter and wetter until his thumb found her clit and rubbed….

In the end, sprawled on her bed, she couldn’t say how many times the world shattered for her, only that somehow every time it did, it put itself back together just so they could break it again. She couldn’t even summon the energy to apologize when Cullen slowly, painfully, slid off the bed and started to gather his armor back together and dress.

Even exhausted beyond thought, she still enjoyed the ache and the sight of her scratches, finger marks, and teeth marks on his body.

And when he left, she rolled over and slept pink dreams that faded into glorious red at their centers.

Later he would tell her that he had gone to the Knight-Commander’s office to report his failure in his duty, but what he saw when he opened the door made him silently close it and keep his secrets to himself.


	3. Merrill/Isabela/Fenris

An irritated dwarf pulled Varric away from the group with many hand gestures and a few intimations that having called Bartrand a son of a bitch was in fact an accurate representation of the Tethras family matron. Varric drew him away to his suite to keep it “low profile” as he wryly put it.

Anders begged Hawke away next, with some private matter he said he needed to discuss with him.

“Still trying to get in his pants,” Isabela observed as the two men left the tavern. “I thought Hawke gave him the ‘we should just be friends’ speech years ago.”

“He did,” Fenris said darkly. “But that does not keep the mage from trying.”

“Can you blame him?” Merrill asked, her elbows on the table and her chin supported by her folded hands. She had watched Hawke leave with a melancholy that she sometimes forgot to conceal. “He just never seems to notice.”

“He notices, Kitten,” Isabela assured her, patting her shoulder. “He’s just not a relationships guy, and most the people around him are.”

“You aren’t,” Merrill observed, making Isabela laugh and Fenris scowl.

Isabela shot Fenris a look and poked him in the arm. “Don’t even think about it. We’ve got a good thing going and I’ll push you off a dock before I let you ruin it with jealousy.”

It was enough to make Fenris subside a little, but he still didn’t look happy. Merrill rushed to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“Do you think this looks tropical?” She pulled the plant closer and ran a finger over one of the petals, marveling at its softness. “I don’t want it to die if it gets too cold and what will I do when we’re off with Hawke? I suppose I could ask someone from the alienage to take care of it, but most of the elves there don’t talk to me much.”

She trailed off, now brushing two fingers over the petals, almost dipping them deep into the core of the flower, but stopping herself for fear of damaging it and losing its beauty. They came away dusted with scarlet pollen that she blew off her fingers before wiping her hand on her leg.

“I don’t know why he isn’t a relationship person,” she mused, not really meaning to say it aloud. “You never have to sleep alone if you don’t want to if you’re in a relationship. I think that would be very nice.”

 _I’d take him to my bed and do such things that neither of us would ever want to leave it again._

“You never have to sleep alone even if you aren’t in a relationship,” Isabela reminded her.

“I know,” Merrill said, dragging her eyes off the flower to give Isabela her attention. “I just—”

 _Her lips. Oh, why have I never noticed her lips before? The things she could do, and I know she has been with women._

“Merrill?” Isabela cocked her head at her. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little pink around the edges and the tips of your ears look overcooked.”

Fenris leaned forward to have a look at her face and quirked an eyebrow.

Merrill gasped at a sudden image of Isabela beneath her, Fenris riding her from behind while he murmured something incomprehensible in Arcanum in her ear. His voice would be enough to make her lose control all by itself.

“Oh… _Oh!”_ Now it wasn’t just her ears that were red, her whole face burned, and a blush had worked its way up from her chest to meet the blush from her face somewhere around her neck.

Isabela frowned. “Are you feeling sick? Now you look fevered.”

She touched Merrill’s forehead and sucked in a breath through her teeth as a warm current flowed from Merrill’s skin through her body, tightening her nipples and making her hips buck with the unexpected force of her reaction.

Merrill forgot all about the flower or Fenris or the fact that they were in the middle of the Hanged Man when she lunged out of her chair to kiss Isabela, her arms wrapping the larger woman’s neck while Isabela circled her waist with her hands.

Vaguely, somewhere in the distance, she heard hoots and cheers from the tavern’s patrons, and she thought she heard Fenris question them. She recognized that he sounded angry, but how could it matter when Isabela’s lips were so much softer than she had ever imagined anyone’s lips to be, her breasts were soft against her, giving so perfectly when Merrill cupped her hand under it to feel its weight.

 _“Enough!”_

She heard Fenris’ growl, felt him close his hand over her wrist hard enough that bruises would bloom in minutes, and she felt the spark of strange, warm magic thrill out of her to bring him into the moment with Isabela. The lyrium in his skin flared, and perhaps he tried to fight it, but Isabela turned away from Merrill’s mouth to fist her fingers in his hair and drag him into a kiss that was as much teeth as lips and tongue.

Later they could all be grateful for Isabela’s experience with drunken debauchery; they weren’t drunk, but they were definitely on their way to debauchery. It was she who dragged both Fenris and Merrill back to the room she kept in the back of the tavern. It was nowhere as nice as Varric’s suite, but it had a big bed and none of them were in any mind to care about anything but slamming the door and tearing away weapons, armor, and clothes as quickly as possible.

There was so much to see, Isabela’s breasts, so much fuller than Merrill’s, Fenris beautiful and bare, the tattoos almost designed to lead the eye down to where he stood away from his body, proud and erect. When Isabela and Fenris bore her down onto the bed she couldn’t decide where her hands and mouth needed to be.

The swell of sensation was almost hallucinatory. What came first? When Isabela knelt between her legs licking her until she was writhing beyond all control while Fenris rode Isabela from behind? Or was that after she sat astride Fenris with Isabela pressed against his back, kissing her over his shoulder?

Did she remember seeing Isabela with a glistening carved phallus between her legs pleasuring herself while she watched Fenris lift Merrill’s legs over his shoulders and thrust so deep into her that it made her cry out with a swelling mix of pain and pleasure? She definitely remembered the flavor of Isabela, tangy and thick on her tongue, the feel of her clitoris swelling as she licked over it and closed her lips tightly around its nub, and she remembered looking up to see Fenris thrusting into her mouth, his voice rough with lust and command as he murmured directions to her – how hard, more teeth, deeper, Maker, _deeper._

It was dreamlike to remember being sandwiched between Isabela and Fenris, realizing that somehow Isabela had grown a cock of her own for her to ride while Fenris worked his way into her from behind. Her cries must have echoed through the Hanged Man – a fact which would be later confirmed to her by more than one leering patron – when she was completely filled and Isabela began to move under her, Fenris slowly finding a counterpoint.

There were isolated moments when Fenris lay gasping beside them, recovering while Merrill and Isabela explored each other’s bodies, all sighs and moans, gasps of surprise or even cunning amusement when one of them found just the way to roll the other’s clit between her fingers or _just_ the spot where a crooked come-hither finger could make one of them almost levitate off the bed with a cry of release.

There were so many moments. So many fractured memories. So many things she could not believe had truly happened until she saw the woman and man lying beside her, too worn out even to move, or the discarded phallus with its straps that Isabela had worn, or the scattered, spilled, emptied bottles of oils that they had used through the afternoon and evening, even well into the night.

And the scent of herself and Isabela and Fenris on her lips, in her hair, on her hands. She may as well have bathed in the two of them.

Isabela had been sprawled across a sleeping Fenris watching her, and must have seen the fear in her eyes. She smiled lazily, murmuring to Merrill that it had been fun; she shouldn’t make it more than that.

For a little longer, Merrill let that be the only truth of the tale and slept, not alone for a change.


	4. Anders/m!Hawke

Anders felt a twist of guilt every time he saw Garrett Hawke. He would have taken exception to Isabela’s comment about “relationships people” around Garrett, but it was true that he ached to be with the man and Garrett obviously did not feel the same way. His guilt, however, had nothing to do with his empty bed and everything to do with the deception he maintained with his friend. They had retrieved the sela petrae, but Garrett was dragging his feet on making the trip to the Bone Pit for drakestone.

He had pulled Garrett away from the others to try to cajole him into making the trip sooner rather than later. The delay weighed on him, ate at him, haunted his nights, and shadowed his days. Between Justice’s constant background demands for action and his own simple fatigue, Anders just wanted all this over with.

As they walked, though, he stole glances at Garrett, following the line of his beard along his jaw, tracing the outline of his lips, thinking of how he had dreamed of just one kiss as a prelude to everything he had yearned for night after night.

 _Just the touch of those lips, wrapped around my cock, sucking until…_

 _…Justice?_

The voice in his head couldn’t have been his own, but Justice? No, that was mad. Justice disapproved of his obsession with Garrett as a needless distraction from the cause.

 _Not I. That was your own lust._

 _I’d think I’d know what my lust sounded like._

 _Would you?_

“Anders?” Garrett had paused at the entrance to the lift that would take them down to Darktown and was regarding him with concern. “Are you okay? You look like you just ran all the way from Sundermount.”

Anders touched his forehead and came away with sweat on his fingertips. “No,” he said weakly. “I don’t think I am. Can you just get me down to my clinic without getting killed by the Carta and then you should go.”

 _Before I strip your armor away, lay you back on a cot, and take you or let you take me, until I wash away this ache with a stream of your moans, until I make you beg, until I…_

He turned his face away from Garrett and scrubbed a hand over it as though to wipe away a vision of Garrett lost in the moment or orgasm.

“If you say so,” Garrett said, not keeping the doubt out of his tone. “But you aren’t looking well. Maybe the healer needs some healing of his own.”

“Don’t I know it,” Anders muttered and pushed past him onto the lift, pressing his back against the far wall to try to keep as much distance between him and Garrett as possible.

He stayed there while the lift rattled down from the surface, keeping his eyes on the floor while his thoughts grew more and more chaotic. He felt drunk, or drugged, or simply _mad_ with years of self-abnegation and denial.

 _It is none of those things._ Justice, as always an active part of all of Anders’ experiences. _It is magic, a new magic I have never felt, though I would judge it closest to Velanna’s, untainted by blood magic, raw, wild._

Anders groaned, because really, that was all he needed. “Bloody…”

“Anders?”

He looked up from his feet to see Garrett standing directly in front of him, close enough to touch, close enough to kiss, close enough to—

 _Take him right there, push him back against the wall, pull the lift door closed and shove him to his knees, pushing between his lips, feeling that clever tongue working the length of his shaft, feeling that voice turned to wordless moans vibrating through his cock, a hand fisted in his dark hair to hold him._

It was Justice who propelled him away from Garrett at a run before Anders could reach for him. He heard Garrett call his name, but he ran, taking the turns and stairs that led him up and down through Darktown’s passages to his clinic.

He slammed the clinic door open and fumbled desperately with the door into his private room at the back of the clinic, praying that he could get inside and bar the door before he did anything he would regret later.

His knees nearly gave out when Garrett grabbed him by the arm and spun him around.

“What is wrong with—”

Anders cut him off with a desperate kiss, a needy groan rising in his throat when the foreign magic flooded into Garrett from the contact.

From there, even with Justice’s attempts at intervention, he was lost in a lustful fugue state. He knew that Garrett’s daggers ended up on top of his pauldrons, and that at one point he was naked except for his boots and the scarf he usually wore draped under his coat, but he had no idea how he had gotten his pants off over his boots.

Later, he found Garrett’s armor scattered through the clinic – in a wash basin, under a cot, one vambrace somehow tossed over a rafter, but Justice refused to answer any of Anders’ questions about what had happened.

 _It never happened,_ the spirit told him, proving that Anders had corrupted him enough to lie.

He treasured what he did remember, though, only regretting that he couldn’t remember more to make the years of aching worth the consummation.

He remembered the moments where he had to pause to pull away from Garrett’s cock in his mouth to moan at the sensation of Garrett sucking him in turn. Shuddering to a climax that had barely passed before a combination of magic and Gray Warden stamina had him rise hard and proud once again.

Or Garrett, exhausted and briefly spent, braced against a wall, moaning against his shoulder while Anders ground his oiled cock between his legs, losing himself in an orgasm just from the friction of the man’s muscled thighs, no penetration needed.

He remembered skin under his fingers, flesh between his teeth, the salty tastes of sweat and pre-ejaculate and the sharper, more bitter flavor of semen.

He would never forget the sensations from the first time Garrett pushed himself into him, the burn of being taken with inadequate preparation even with the oil they had simply poured everywhere, and how, despite that, he still frantically rocked back until their bodies slapped together, pulling away to repeat the motion until the burn faded into just the _heat_ of being fucked almost through the cot where he knelt.

When he finally started cleaning up the clinic, he found semen on the wall and had to brace himself, gasping as his body jerked in sympathy with the image of Garrett with his hands against the wall just there, his head thrown back against Anders’ shoulder while Anders thrust against him, lost in the orgasm that had him spilling in Anders’ hand and onto the wall in front of him.

He found many stains, and each time, they brought back an echo of the mad ecstasy that had ridden them both.

His body would never forget the heat of Garrett’s flesh, the perfect clench around his cock, the thrill of his moans vibrating along Anders’ skin. And while Justice seemed to think that he should, he could feel no guilt for what they had done, even under the influence of some mysterious magic.

For the rest of his life, however long or short that might be, he would hold the memory of Garrett Hawke lying naked and exhausted in his arms as a treasure that not even templars could take from him.


	5. Solivitus/Thrask

Solivitus would think later, when he could think again, that perhaps he should have realized that a plant called _veneficus votum_ might, possibly, maybe, _perhaps_ have earned the common tongue-name “mage’s desire” for a bloody _reason_. That realization came only after he learned the reason firsthand.

Thrask intervened in the altercation with the harbormaster’s assistant. Sol couldn’t remember the last time he had been so angry. All the sovereigns spent for the spells to preserve the plant, all the time spent wondering when and if the shipment of rare specimens would ever arrive, all the excitement he had felt upon seeing the first plant lifted safely from the crate, and this _boy_ had probably sold the other crate to some thug for a few silver.

He was red-faced with anger and beginning to shout when Thrask stepped between him and Aden.

“Sol, it’s time to let the lad go,” Thrask said.

“Ser Thrask you can’t mean to—”

“He can’t look for your crate if he’s here getting a dressing down, can he?” Thrask said reasonably.

Sol felt a little of his strange anger leave him. “No,” he conceded to the templar. “But if you,” he turned another glare on Aden, “don’t find my crate, I will have the harbormaster take the cost out of your hide.”

Aden winced and bobbed his head. “I know, ser. I’ll find it, ser. Only, if it’s gone, it’s not my fault. I—”

Thrask cut through the flow of excuses. “We won’t know until you go look.”

Sol watched Aden scurry away and ran a hand over his hair to ensure that it hadn’t slid out of place while he shouted.

“It’s Circle money he’ll have lost if he doesn’t find the crate, and I won’t be the only disappointed mage here. There are others here who have been eagerly awaiting this shipment.”

Thrask gave him his full regard and answered him with the respect that had endeared him to many of the Circle’s mages. Unlike other templars Thrask actually seemed to care. “If he doesn’t give you a satisfactory answer, I will speak to the guard about it. But honestly, Sol, did you think that shouting at him was going to help?”

“No,” Sol admitted. “And you know me, I’m not usually so hot-headed. I don’t know what got into me.”

Come to think of it, he knew what hadn’t gotten into him. It hadn’t gotten into him in years in fact. Looking into Thrask’s vivid blue eyes, he regretted that his only solace had been in his own hand for even longer than he’d had his little hair thinning problem.

“It might be the sun,” Thrask suggested. “You look as though you’ve seen too much of it today. You’re red as a beet.”

“You’re probably right,” Sol agreed. “Let me just get these plants out of the sun and I’ll have a lie down in my cart for a bit.”

“I’ll help.”

Together the two men uncrated the remaining plants, setting them out in a row under the canopy of Sol’s stand. While they worked, Sol found it harder and harder to focus on the task when his attention wanted to drift to the strong line of the templar’s jaw. He even caught himself reaching out to brush his fingers through Thrask’s hair when he was bent over the crate carefully lifting out another flower. Sol snatched his hand back as though he had nearly burned it and gave thanks that his smalls would keep his sudden erection from tenting the front of his robe.

“Thank you, Ser Thrask,” he said when they finished, brushing red pollen off his hands and robe before offering his hand to Thrask for a handshake. “You’re a good man.”

 _How big are you under that armor? Is it a broadsword or a dagger?_

Sol almost jerked his hand back before Thrask could touch him when his mind suddenly swam with a vivid imagining of weighing the templar’s weapon in his hand. He could almost feel his thumb brushing over Thrask’s scrotum just to enjoy it tightening under the touch.

“Just you go—” Thrask took his hand and broke off with a sharp intake of breath when magic sparked off Sol’s skin, jolting them both.

There was nowhere to go; it struck them too quickly and too publicly. Later Sol swore that the next person who said, “I didn’t know you had it in you” and sniggered, was going to get a lightning bolt right up the backside.

Admittedly, turning over his fragmented memories, he certainly did have it in him, and in Thrask for that matter. It was difficult to regret the memory of Thrask spasming around him as he buried himself to the hilt in his body, feeling their balls slap together, bending to bite into the meat of his shoulder just to hear his cry of protest ring out against the courtyard’s high walls.

He remembered the cart by his stall tipping with them in it at one point, sending them tumbling against its front wall before they simply grabbed each other again, grappling, writhing, Thrask holding their cocks in his hand while they thrust together, flesh lubricated with sweat, saliva, and semen until Sol came first.

Not that he got any respite then. Thrask jerked his leg up to pin him to the floor of the cart with a thrust that made Sol shout with confused pain before he subsided under the strange magic’s heat, already rolling his hips even as his cock softened post-orgasm.

Remembering a Tranquil mage trying to remind them that templars and mages weren’t supposed to fraternize brought heat to Sol’s cheeks. Likely because he had been in the middle of holding a kneeling Thrask’s buttocks apart to lick him all the way from his balls to his anus, burying his tongue past the spasming muscle while Thrask coaxed himself back to hardness after still another orgasm.

What he knew was that he and Thrask made a warped kind of history in the Circle that day. Everyone agreed that no one had expected the two men to be quite so… limber.

And perhaps Sol took a small amount of pride in the fact that when the haze lifted, Thrask lay moaning and incoherent on the cold stones while Sol dragged his robe over his head and staggered up the stairs into the Templar Hall. So much for templars being stronger than mages, he thought.

He bumped into Cullen on his way up the stairs to find the First Enchanter. Sol thought the Knight-Captain looked as though he had just seen a demon giving it to his mother hard and fast – and where were such crude thoughts coming from? – as he hurried away.

The First Enchanter’s office was empty, but he heard the sound of Orsino’s voice coming from Meredith’s office across the hall and this seemed an important enough occasion to interrupt the two in one of their interminable arguments.

Sol thought that right until the moment he knocked on the door before pushing it open.

He tilted his head and decided that the First Enchanter was _remarkably_ flexible, then he pulled the door closed again and hobbled away.

It seemed Orsino had decided to give Meredith a flower.


	6. Orsino/Meredith

The flower that Bethany had been so taken with amused Orsino far more than he let on. He took the specimen from Solivitus fully intending to offer it to Meredith as a peace gesture with a knife in it. After all, how could she find fault with his offering her a rare flower the trusted Formari herbalist had imported across the continent at great expense and effort?

And if it just happened to bear more than a passing resemblance female genitalia, he was certain that Meredith was too tightly wound to mention it, making the gift just that much better.

He rapped on Meredith’s office door and waited to hear her terse call to enter before pushing it open, finding her sitting at her desk with another stack of missives laid out in front of her.

“What is it now, Orsino?” she asked, sounding weary in the privacy of her office.

She was growing older, Orsino noted. Up close it was possible to see that there was silver threading her blond hair, crows feet around her eyes, and a weight in her carriage that said her armor grew heavier with each passing year.

She was still beautiful. One of the Maker’s jokes that the woman who oppressed him as a mage had always held such a fascination to him as a man.

“Solivitus had a new shipment,” he said, closing the door before he crossed to her desk to set the potted plant in front of her. “And I thought your office could use a bit of color. It almost goes with your hood, does it not?”

Meredith regarded the flower with suspicion, as though expecting it to suddenly stand up on tendrils and try to bite her finger.

“I have no time to care for this,” Meredith protested, still reaching out to touch a petal then rub it between her two fingers.

“Why else do you have an assistant?” Orsino said, stealing a glance at the papers on her desk while she was distracted by the flower. “Tell Elsa to care for it and you know she will not fail you.”

Meredith snatched her hand away from the flower and turned an accusatory stare up at Orsino. “What are you doing?”

“I?” Orsino asked, keeping his amusement at her reactions behind a mask of surprise at her tone. “I am attempting to foster more cordial relations between the First Enchanter and the Knight-Commander. Ultimately do we not have the same goal – safety for mages and non-mages alike?”

He placed both hands on her desk and slowly, deliberately, leaned toward her. His fingertips left whorled fingerprints in red pollen on her blotter.

“Meredith, have you never thought that relations between templars and mages need not be always adversarial? We should set the tone for our people, show them a united front.”

She was a beautiful woman, no matter how severe her expression or how concealing her armor – and to be frank, her armor was not _that_ concealing.

When a foreign magic suddenly rose up, trying to direct him, trying to ride him, trying to use him, Orsino tightened his fingers on the desk and drew a deep breath through his nose. He could smell the flower and imagined that what he was truly smelling was Meredith herself, that she wanted him as much as he suddenly ached for her.

Visions clamored for his attention, swimming at the edges of his mind like the temptations of demons.

He fought them back, shoved them down. He was First Enchanter and whatever this was, he would master it.

There were angles to consider, advantages to examine… _against the wall or draped over her desk?_

“—your problem, Orsino?”

Meredith’s question dragged him out of the reverie to the realization that he was not winning the battle with the magic that was riding him _the way he wanted to ride her, her legs over his shoulders…._

He had to think quickly, decide. Stay and ride it out? _Stay and let her straddle him, strong thighs tight at his hips…_

He banished the thought. Stay and turn this to his advantage? Or flee and lock himself in his study with only his hand?

_His hand between her legs, dipping into her to feel the heat, the moisture, feel…_

The advantage he might hold over her head.

“Meredith….” He let himself sway on his feet, his head dropping as though he could no longer hold it up. He heard rather than saw her push her chair out and hurry around the desk to catch him should he fall.

It was easy when he let magic flow without fighting it. He fell into Meredith’s arms and put a bare hand up to her cheek, pushing the magic into her skin and watching her pupils immediately dilate in response.

The magic still wanted to ride him, and that was fine within reason, but he drew the mental line in the sand at losing time.

From the moment he stripped away his robe until the moment he finally, exhausted, staggered his way up to his private chambers, Orsino would remember every single thing he and Meredith did together.

He remembered helping her out of the last of her armor, he remembered their first desperate coupling, up against the wall, Meredith _begging_ for him to drive into her harder, her strong fingers digging into his buttocks.

In the mirror in his chamber he picked out those bruises among the many and cataloged them.

He remembered going to his knees in front of her while he recovered after his first orgasm, licking the taste of his own semen off of her mingled with the heady tang of her own lust. He remembered how she cried out when he found her clit and closed his teeth lightly over it, teasing it out of its hood with his tongue.

He remembered every single time she spasmed around his tongue, his fingers, his cock.

He remembered how tight she was, as though she had truly adhered to her vows of celibacy for her entire adult life, and he remembered how impossibly _tighter_ her ass was when she begged him to take her there as well.

He would forever be able to summon a smile in her presence simply by remembering her cry of _“Plunge your staff into me, you bastard!”_

He treasured finally stopping her mouth with his cock, hearing her voice muffled as he thrust as deep as she could tolerate. If only it were always that easy.

He let her have him on her desk, on hands and knees, one hand wrapped around his cock while she plunged her fingers deep into his ass while she told him stories of how she would find the biggest phallus in Kirkwall to fuck him with, how she would strap it on and make him writhe under her.

It was in that position that he heard the door open and saw the Knight-Captain peek into the room before he closed the door again. Meredith was still lost in her storytelling, but Orsino remembered.

And when she ordered him onto his back with his shoulders and head dangling off the desk, even upside down, he recognized Ser Thrask when the templar opened the door and looked inside before also closing it and beating a retreat.

None of it mattered.

What mattered was that when they were finally both spent and the magic released them from its hold, Orsino remembered everything and Meredith would have to beg him for his silence.

When he left her office, he took the flower with him.


End file.
